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Making Use of Flash Steam
21 March 2018

In this final instalment of our eBook '3 Reasons why you Should Recover your Flash Steam,' we explain how to make use of your flash steam and what to look for when surveying your plant or steam system.

There are various technologies available for making use of your flash steam:

This an energy conservation method based on the same principle as heat pumps. The mechanical steam re compressor uses external energy (electricity) to re-energise an available steam flow.

The steam re compressor transforms electrical power into thermal power; so that steam can be used at higher energy levels to satisfy the specific thermal demand of a process, which otherwise would require the generation of additional steam and consequent fuel usage.

The energy required to energise a steam flow (i.e. increase pressure and temperature) is much lower than what would be required to generate the steam at the same level of pressure and temperature starting from liquid water, as it happens in typical steam generators.

Low-Pressure Flash Steam to Process

Where flash steam is separated from condensate and supplied to a local steam using process.

A continuous use of this low-pressure flash steam is required from the process for this to work.

Thermo Compressor

Uses steam at high pressure to entrain the low pressure/flash steam and discharge a mixture at some intermediate pressure, however, it requires that the process has a useful intermediate steam pressure.

What to look for?

Processes that use high-pressure steam as they are the source of flash steam

Vapour clouds, such as steam being vented outside of a factory indicates a source of flash steam

What Next?

If you have flash steam and want to reuse it for your processes then the Heliex SteamComp will re-compress the steam, taking it directly from a low pressure to a higher one.

Payback of under 3 years

Uses the same principle as heat pumps by utilising external (electrical) energy to re-energise steam.

Highly efficient with a Coefficient of Performance (COP) of between 5 - 15.